City, University of London awarded grant to progress innovation plans across Europe

City, University of London has won a grant to help develop its Museum of Entrepreneurship and ensure continued enterprise and innovation across Europe.

The Museum of Entrepreneurship is an online museum that collects stories of entrepreneurs from local communities into a digital platform, which is available to anyone with an interest in entrepreneurship. The stories are created by the students with the aim to inspire and educate about entrepreneurship.

In response to the pilot call for proposals, the European Institute of Innovation and Technology’s (EIT) Higher Education Institute (HEI) Initiative: Innovation Capacity Building for Higher Education chose City; The Norwegian University of Science and Technology; Nord University; and the University of Split to share the grant, with the activities available to the other HEIs in the consortium.

By sharing the resource at other universities, it will be possible to measure and document increases in local enterprise and innovation among students, staff and the local community.

Founded by Dr Stefania Zerbinati, the Museum of Entrepreneurship will now be able to collect more stories exhibiting leading examples of entrepreneurship and build its expertise in the field to inform the Business School (formerly Cass’s) MSc in Entrepreneurship and MSc in Marketing Strategy and Innovation.

Working with Dr Oguz A. Acar, Director of the Marketing Strategy & Innovation MSc Programme at the Business School (formerly Cass), the City team will also develop a new teaching guide to assist cross-disciplinary learning between entrepreneurship and marketing students, which will lead more stories for the museum and serve as a model for other consortium partners.

Dr Zerbinati, Reader in Entrepreneurship at the Business School, who was supported by Brigita Jurisic from the Academic Enterprise team, said: “We are very excited to work with students and academics from other European universities as part of this project.

“This grant represents an opportunity to collect stories of entrepreneurs from across the continent. By building on our own already extensive resource, we can ensure other institutions, as well as our own, can continue to grow and learn from the achievements of young innovators.”

More information about the Museum of Entrepreneurship is available online.

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Notes to Editors

1. The participating partners in the project are City, University of London; Norwegian University of Science and Technology; Nord University; TrønderEnergi; UNIST Tehnološki park; University of Gdańsk; University of Split; and University of Western Brittany
2. The total grant awarded to the participating partners is €1.2 million from European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT)
3. A total of 64 applications from across 36 countries were made for the grant, including from 319 higher education institutions and 429 non-academic organisations
4. The EIT’s HEI Initiative: Innovation Capacity Building for Higher Education was launched by the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) and is led by EIT RawMaterials − one of the EIT’s Knowledge and Innovation Communities. The initiative is part of the EIT’s 2021–2027 EIT Strategy, and it aims to help higher education institutions to build the capacity to innovate and to teach innovation and entrepreneurship. In March 2020, the HEI Initiative launched a Pilot Call for Proposals, inviting higher education institutions to design activities that will improve their entrepreneurial and innovation capacity. Successful grant recipients were selected in mid-July.